UNDULATING COUNTRY.
September, 1847.
After about a mile and a half, the direction of the plain trending to the south more than was suited to our purpose, we turned to the left, to cross the ridge which ran parallel to it on the north-east. A long gravelly plain, sloping almost imperceptibly upwards, led us to the summit of the ridge, which was not more than two or three hundred feet above the plain we had left. From this pass, for such it was, though an insignificant one, an open valley, skirted on both sides by low rounded hills, ran to the north-east for nearly five miles. The appearance of the country was very remarkable. The hills were all very gentle in slope, and quite rounded in outline, so that the surface was almost undulating. It required reflection on the fact that we were traversing a tract in which the bottoms of the valleys were from 15,000 to 15,500 feet above the level of the sea, to make us aware of the very mountainous nature of the country we were passing through, which was, if any part of Tibet (which I have seen) may be so called, the Table Land north of the Himalaya. The height of the mountains, too, was in fact greater than we had at first been inclined to believe, the gentleness of the slopes making us think the ridges nearer than they really were, and therefore leading to a false estimate of their height. In general they were from 1000 to 2000 feet in height, and their summits therefore from 16,000 to 17,000 feet above the level of the sea.
OPEN VALLEYS.
September, 1847.
The open valley along which we now proceeded was remarkable in another point of view. It was quite waterless, and seemed hemmed in on both sides by hills, so that its drainage must take place in the direction of its long axis; at least, no lateral depression could be perceived on either side. About a mile from its eastern end, this plain was lower than in any other part. We had been descending along it from west to east, and we could see that beyond that point it rose gently to the eastward. The surface of the lowest part was covered with a hard shining white clay, without any of the fine gravel which abounded elsewhere. A few tufts of an Eurotia were the only plant which it produced. It was evident that the winter snows which fall on this isolated spot, when melted in summer, finding no exit, form a small lake, till they completely disappear by evaporation.
HANLE PLAIN, ITS VEGETATION.
September, 1847.
After crossing this low clayey tract, we ascended gently for nearly a mile in an easterly direction, when the valley terminated very abruptly and unexpectedly in a precipitous descent of four or five hundred feet, the clay-slate rocks emerging suddenly from beneath the gravel at the very edge of the precipice. The road descended in a narrow gorge, which had apparently been worn by aqueous action in the almost perpendicular cliff. On emerging from this gorge, we found ourselves on the border of a very extensive perfectly level tract, seemingly surrounded by hills, and approaching in shape to a circle, though its outline, from projecting ranges of hills, was very irregular. The margins of this plain were dry and gravelly; the centre, as seen from a distance, was green, but in many places encrusted with a saline efflorescence.
Skirting this plain, which lay on our right, while ranges of hills, separated by wide gravelly valleys, occupied the left, we reached Hanle, a Buddhist monastery inhabited by about twenty lamas, built on the summit of a steep hill which rises abruptly out of the plain. We encamped in a ravine at the foot of the hill on which the monastery is built, in which the tents of the wandering population are erected when they bring their flocks into this neighbourhood.
The plain of Hanle, which is not, I think, less than six or eight miles in diameter, resembles very much that curious flat tract which we passed on the 12th of September, on the south side of the Lanak pass; it is, however, much larger in dimensions. Several streams, very tortuous and sluggish, wind over its surface. These were frequently three feet or more in depth, and contained multitudes of small fish, usually about six inches in length, but growing to eight or ten inches at least. They were a species of carp. We tried to eat them, but, though sweet and well-tasted, the bones were so numerous and troublesome that we relinquished the attempt. We were much interested at the occurrence of fish at an elevation of 14,300 feet, a height at which, à priori, it would scarcely have been expected that they would have existed.
The surface of the plain was very saline, and, where not swampy, covered with coarse grasses and Cyperaceæ. It was very uneven, hummocks or knolls being scattered over the surface, which made walking very difficult. These, I presume, were caused by the gradual growth of plants, which, in process of time, formed heaps in spots not covered by water during the melting of the snow in spring. In some parts there were extensive patches of Dama. A species of Elymus and a Blysmus were very abundant. The ground in the vicinity of the streams was swampy, and the coarse grasses of the drier parts were replaced by little Potentillæ, Glaux maritima, Taraxacum, Aster, and a number of Chenopodiaceous plants. In the running waters a Potamogeton and Ranunculus aquatilis were plentiful. The streams, which must, I believe, as in the case of the plain of the 12th, principally derive their supply from springs which break out on the edge of the flat country, all converge to a point at the north-east end of the plain, and, uniting into one, continue their course down an open valley in a northerly direction towards the Indus.
As no section of the bed of this remarkable plain is anywhere to be seen, it is not possible to form an estimate of the depth of its boggy soil, or of the nature of the subjacent deposit. It can scarcely be doubted that it has at one time been a lake, which has been gradually silted up; but it is not easy to conjecture the length of time which has elapsed since it became dry land, in the absence of any knowledge of the nature and contents of the deposits which occur beneath the surface. As an outlet for the waters of the plain exists to the northward, we may infer that the waters of the lake were always fresh.